Raven Chacon

Workshops: Creating and Interpreting “Scores” in Your Artistic Practice

Raven Chacon is the SCA’s Fall 2019 Audain Visual Artist in Residence. He will be leading a series of workshops concerning the production and presentation of “scores.”

The notion of the score, while familiar in music, also has a history that spans the arts. This workshop is given from the basis of Chacon’s practice, which uses experimental notation forms. Through example and discussion participants will create and perform their own scores.

What form can a score for—or as—a painting, video editing scheme, camera movement, written script, sculpture, monologue, or theatrical work, take? How can the other disciplines learn from music’s way of encoding tempo, pitch, dynamics, and performative strategies? Producing a score allows artists a way to share their artistic ideas in notational form; it can encourage new ways of thinking about artistic method and object.

The first two workshops are structured around producing scores; the next three are more focused on performing scores. The series will end with a public presentation of some of the works created in the workshops as well as performances of some of Chacon’s scores, which will also be on display in the Audain Gallery in the exhibition Relations of Responsibility.

All students and community members are welcome and encouraged to pre-register and take these workshops. Please email Judy Radul, the Audain Artist in Residence Coordinator, at jaradul@sfu.ca to enroll in the workshops. We hope you can commit to the whole series. If not, please include the dates you can attend in your email.

Workshops & Performance

Tue., Oct. 29 | 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Thur., Oct. 31 | 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Tue., Nov. 12 | 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Thur., Nov. 14 | 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Sat., Nov. 16 | 2:00 – 5:00 PM
Sun., Nov. 17 | 12:30 – 4:30 PM | Performance
Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre
SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver

Other Events in the Residency Schedule

Relations of Responsibility: Raven Chacon, Gabi Dao, Lou Sheppard
Exhibition: Oct. 10 – Dec. 7, 2019 | Audain Gallery
Opening: Wed., Oct. 9, 7:00 – 9:00 PM
Full information HERE

Performance: For Zitkála – Šá, directed by Raven Chacon
Sun., Nov. 17, 2:00 PM | Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre,
SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
Full information HERE

Listening Party: Aram Bajakian, Raven Chacon, and Gabi Dao
Fri., Nov. 22, 7:00 PM | Western Front, 303 E. 8 Ave., Vancouver

Talk: Raven Chacon in Dialogue
Sat., Nov. 23, 6:00 PM | Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema,
SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, or with Postcommodity, Chacon has exhibited or performed at Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney, and The Kennedy Center. Every year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). He is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Toronto, ON. spiderwebsinthesky.com

Co-presented by the SCA Audain Visual Artist in Residence program and SFU Galleries' Audain Gallery.